Mind Games Come and Go, but Yogurt is for Life...

by Jonathan Bredemeyer

Burn Notice  "Mind Games" (S03E03) 

Hanging out at his mom's place, Michael starts out by dodging his mom's jabs at his and Fiona's relationship while she attempts to hold his brother's baby. Moving to the garage, Nate tries to strike up conversation while Michael works on the Charger, but he fails. Nate confesses he needs help staying away from gambling and his wife isn't really good for him... and neither is Vegas...   

 Michael sneaks off to go shopping with Fi, who tries to get Michael to buy a paper shredder. After supposedly discovering a tail, Michael jumps an innocent dad going for a teddy bear, and tries to describe 'post operation paranoia' as something you can't control. Pulling a gun in a thunderstorm, it seems Michael is going a bit crazy in his young age... 

Sam makes his first appearance with a gift for Michael: a massage at his new girlfriend's hotel and spa. Fi and Sam have been talking about his 'issue' and are hoping the spa will help him relax. "Let's not worry about Mike, he's Mike." Sam's deep advice to Fi doesn't take... 

Michael meets up with Nate to hear about trouble that his friend is in.  He spills out the story of a fellow gambler's wife named Jessica getting harassed by a loan shark.  Michael tries to back out, but his brother butters him up, he bites, and takes the job.  [Good thing too, since Jessica's a hot blonde.]  Turns out, she's been harassed by a guy named Carter who wants her boat.  Jessica has nothing to offer for payment... but free yogurt, ha! 

Michael makes Nate head home while he and Sam check out Carter, the loan shark. At the Jai-Lai arena, Sam gets on Michael about taking it easy. They find and label Carter "a pit bull" while scouting his boss, Wallace. Michael makes a plan to make it look like the police are after Jessica's boat so they'll back off. 

Back at the loft, Michael switches into one of Nate's shirts as Fi shows up with a paper shredder for all of Michael's old files. He heads out to get free yogurt at Jessica's and to wait for Carter to show. Playing the biggest dork yet when the goons appear to threaten Jessica, Michael breaks a table and a cash register but convinces Carter to take his Vegas-style pitch to his boss. Wallace wants to beat up Michael immediately, but Michael sells it and gets a promise to be fed to the gators if it fails, plus a plan from Carter to kill Jessica... 

At a random outside meeting spot, Michael, Sam, Nate, and Jessica run over the plan to set up Carter as an undercover cop. Michael and Nate follow Carter to put a tracker on his car. After they see he's about to burn down a motorcycle dealership, Michael heads inside to stop him. He distracts him long enough to let the owner escape, and returns to the car to NOT get a joke from Nate... [yeah, he's really out of it...] 

That night at the loft, Michael is still obsessing over old files when Fi shows up with the plant materials to make Carter look like an undercover cop. She sees an open files box and assumes he's been shredding... which he doesn't correct... 

Spy lesson of the episode: "Bad guys, like most people, aren't big on checking the details in legal documents." Michael explains the advantages you can gain by changing the fine print. He meets up with Carter and lets him take the 'deed' to the boat. Carter then blows up the plan by heading home... not allowing Sam and Fi enough time to finish planting the fake cop evidence under the floor. Sam runs outside as Michael explains how to stall someone with an accident. [basically the Goldilocks effect of just the right amount of impact and timing to get just the right amount of delay] Sam pulls in front of Carter, gets hit, and stalls him just enough for Fi to cover up the floor, break a nail, and jump off the balcony... 

Back at his mom's, Michael, Nate, Sam, and Jessica listen via a bug to Carter show off the boat to Wallace. Next, the guys plan to bring in Jesse to blow Carter's fancies of fast promotion up the criminal organizational ladder sky-high. Michael heads back to Wallace to get the boat papers back. Wallace is naturally suspicious and 'forces' Michael to show him photos of Carter being a cop. He takes them to Jesse, who pretends to have photos of the boat in a raid last year. Wallace buys it, but he insists on taking Michael along to raid Carter's place. 

Wallace's guys tear up Carter's place... but do a pretty bad job. After some prompting by Michael to keep the search going, they actually find Carter's FBI credentials in the wall. Wallace has him hauled off to be killed... 

"To stay in the game, you have to seem just as crazy as everyone else." Michael gets in the way of Wallace killing Carter by asking to get information first. He makes a call to Sam and Fi to get them to swoop in as backup, and then frees Carter's hands before closing the trunk. When the car stops, Carter jumps out, clocks Wallace, and breaks free. Sam and Fi meet up with Carter in the woods, and they improv a bit to save Carter's plan to bring down Wallace. Michael stays undercover and convinces Wallace not to run to Cuba, but rather run to the office to get his books and cash. He buys it. 

At the office, Michael tells them to get everything and they load up while he makes a break for it. Wallace and friends walk out into a hoard of cops, with Carter in the front. Sam and Michael go to de-stress, but Michael does voice some concern over how close they came to costing Carter his life. [Doubt is not often heard from Weston's lips.]  

At the out-brief meeting in the yogurt shop, Jessica gives Michael a 'free yogurt for life' card in thanks. [What's a life worth in pounds of yogurt, anyway?] On the walk out, Nate confronts Michael about being addicted to his spy work, which seems to be spot-on, and Michael basically agrees. Back at the loft in the middle of the night, Fi wakes up to Michael pouring over the files he didn't shred. Fi asks him to come to bed, but Michael stays mesmerized by his spy files...  

[No explosions left me unfulfilled, but not a bad character-building episode for setting up conflict later on in the season.]